


Eighteen Hours

by LaVieEnRose



Category: Queer as Folk (US)
Genre: Allergies, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Asthma, Cancer, Cancer Arc, Canon Related, Fluff and Angst, Gap Filler, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-21
Updated: 2018-07-21
Packaged: 2019-06-13 20:47:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15373011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaVieEnRose/pseuds/LaVieEnRose
Summary: The thing is, cancer sort of trumps hay fever.





	Eighteen Hours

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TrueIllusion](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TrueIllusion/gifts).



> I'm ridiculous, I know. Thanks for the prompt!! As always, feel free to prompt whatever in the comments, particularly if it involves beating the shit out of Justin because obviously that's my favorite.

Justin hasn't slept for two days. It's a weird kind of nagging worry, like something he forgets and then remembers every so often, when there's nothing else on his mind. Which isn't often. For instance, right now, even though he's lying in bed in the dark, even though now would be a reasonable time to focus on how he hasn't slept—or, even better, to _sleep_ —his thoughts are preoccupied with the irritating itch in his eyes and throat and with Brian tossing and turning next to him. He looks at the open window, the ones they leave open despite the early spring chill to try to keep the smell of vomit and sweat and fucking misery from taking up residence in the loft, and wonders if Brian would ask questions, would even notice, if Justin got up and closed them. Thinks about how badly he'd like to blow his nose right about now.

Brian rolls over beside him again, grunting. He's always antsy the night before radiation.

Justin clears his throat and says, “Go to sleep.”

Brian throws an arm over Justin's chest and sighs petulantly.

Justin strokes Brian's hair with one hand and digs a knuckle into his eye with the other. “Go to sleep,” he says.

**

In the morning, Justin's staring blankly into his bowl of oatmeal and wondering if having a fourth cup of coffee would really be that bad an idea when Brian comes down from the bedroom. He looks...unabashedly nervous, which are two words Justin would normally never use to describe Brian in any capacity, and certainly not together.

“You have to leave,” Brian says.

Justin rubs his forehead and tries not to sneeze. “We've been through this.”

“No, I—”

“You pushed me out the door? I made chicken soup? Did a little speech?”

“I heard you coughing last night,” Brian says. “You can't...” he rubs a hand over his mouth. “I'm not supposed to be around sick people.”

Justin doesn't know if Brian's this uncomfortable about kicking him out because he doesn't want to talk about the reason he can't be around sick people or because he feels bad about sending Justin away when he thinks he's sick. Sometimes it's better just to live in the uncertainty.

Regardless.

“I'm not sick,” Justin says. “It's just allergies.”

Brian looks at him dubiously.

“Seriously,” Justin says. “Do you think I'm, what, enough of an asshole that I'd lie about it and stay here and risk getting you sick?”

“That's true,” Brian says.

“It's the first week of Spring. I can show you the pollen count alerts on my phone.”

Brian relaxes. Everyone's always done that, ever since Justin was a kid. Everyone's always relieved that he's not sick. Just allergies, because that's what allergies are to most people, an annoyance, a passing concern, and Justin's milked every ounce of sidestepping he could get out of saying “just allergies,” for as long as he can remember, and he's sure as fuck going to do it this year, even if his lungs sort of already feel like he's drowning.

“You want to eat anything before we go?” he asks Brian. “I got more of those protein bars you like.”

Brian's watching him. “Okay.”

Justin sneezes. “Or I can make eggs.”

“Y'know, you don't have to come today.”

“I know,” Justin says, hopefully with a voice that says that's the end of the discussion, and it must work because Brian doesn't argue anymore. Justin gets up and scrambles some eggs, and he hears Brian close the windows.

**

Justin doesn't know what the fuck plants are growing between the parking garage and the radiologist's office, but as he sits there in the waiting room clawing his eyes out he makes a pledge to find and destroy every last one of them. Everyone in here is looking at him like he's diseased, and all he wants to do is shrink into his shirt collar and disappear for the rest of his life. Or sleep.

He settles instead for a string of sneezes so long it leaves him dizzy and a series of hacking coughs into his elbow. He closes his eyes, slumps in his seat, and daydreams about tea and cool washcloths and HEPA filters.

“Hey.”

He opens his eyes. Brian's standing in front of him, holding his jacket, looking rough.

The thing is, cancer sort of trumps hay fever.

Justin stands up and gives him a hug. Brian's stiff, always acts like any amount of affection here is admitting weakness, but he lets him, and sometimes Justin needs to just feel that he's here and in one piece. “Good time?” he asks.

Brian says, “Oh, yeah, it was a blast.”

“Heh, blast.”

Justin gets to drive on radiation days. He drops Brian off at the office, then drives to school where he'll go to a few classes before Brian hits a wall and needs to be picked up. He'll bring him home, make sure he's settled and okay, then head to the diner and work until midnight.

He forces himself not to glance at Brian every few seconds the whole drive to Kinnetik, because Brian has a hair trigger when it comes to being fussed over and Justin doesn't feel like being yelled at today. Brian cranks down the passenger side window for a few blocks before mumbling, “Sorry, forgot,” and rolling it back up.

“It's okay,” Justin says. “If you need the fresh air.”

“I don't need anything,” Brian says, and Justin just does not have the energy for that, so he says “Okay,” and lets Brian pout the rest of the drive. He's surprised when he parks and Brian leans over and kisses him tenderly.

“You taken something?” Brian whispers.

Justin doesn't want to lie, so he just says, “Brian, I'm fine,” before he realizes that that is, potentially, also a lie. He hasn't been able to swallow right since this morning, and he doesn't particularly love his odds of driving all the way to PIFA without sneezing the car into a pole. But that's nothing Brian needs to be concerned about. “I'll be here at one, okay?”

Brian thumbs an itchy tear out of the corner of Justin's eye. “Okay.” He kisses Justin's nose and smiles a little when it makes him sneeze. “Don't worry so much,” he says.

“Okay,” Justin lies again.

**

He makes it through one class before he feels like he's going to choke or fall asleep or both, and the walk to his next takes him past the quad and he can't bear the thought of doing that to his sinuses right now. He drives back to his apartment and has almost, almost fallen asleep on the couch when Daphne comes home. He can never remember her schedule.

“Hey, haven't seen much of you lately,” she says. “How's Brian?”

“He had radiation today,” Justin says.

She gets closer. “Christ, you look like shit.”

“It's just allergies.”

“Yeah, it was 'just allergies' when you ended up in the ER with an asthma attack from Ethan's cat, too,” she says. “I'm getting Benadryl.”

“I can't take Benadryl,” he says. “It'll knock me out. I have to pick up Brian in an hour.”

“Brian's going to take one look at you and forcefeed it to you himself,” she says.

Justin actually laughs, imagining Brian having that kind of focus for anything but puking a few hours after radiation. “I doubt it.”

Still, a part of him wants Brian to notice that he isn't feeling good, and God, he _hates_ himself, fucking _despises_ himself for that. Brian has given him everything for years; Justin can't set aside his own bullshit long enough for a course of radiation? A reasonable part of Justin's brain tells him it's not his fault that it's Spring and his immune system is an asshole, but the reasonable part tapped out about thirty-six sleepless hours ago.

Brian texts him a little after twelve asking if he can head over early, which means it's going to be a rough one, so it's a good thing he skipped his second class. Cynthia gives him a little wave when he comes in. There's a colorful vase of flowers on her desk and Justin has to contain his fight or flight response. Normally one bunch of flowers wouldn't bother him too much, but he's already so hypersensitive that it feels like there's a colony of bees living somewhere inside his skull, and he's still stifling sneezes into a bundle of tissues when Brian comes out of his office. Luckily, he's too distracted to notice. He shoves his jacket at Justin and it takes Justin a second—his reflexes always slow down when his allergies are bad—to realize Brian wants him to help him into it. He does, trying to act casual, trying not to act like he's scared out of his fucking mind that Brian's too spent to put on his own coat.

“I stopped by the video rental on my way to school,” he tells Brian as they go to the car, his arm wrapped around Brian's waist in a way that hopefully seems natural. “We can watch _Uncommon Valor._ ”

“You ever seen it?” Brian asks.

“No. A little before my time.” He stands on his toes and kisses Brian's cheek.

“It's awful,” Brian says.

Justins shrugs and tries not to feel like he's failed. “Didn't really seem like the time for quality cinema.”

Brian opens the car door and collapses into the passenger seat. “Maybe you're right.”

He falls asleep soon after they get to the loft, and Justin covers him up with a blanket and leaves a bottle of water on the nightstand and heads to work. Debbie doesn't get in until six, so he has a few hours where no one bothers him too much about looking like crap, which, of course, ends abruptly as soon as she shows up.

“You look like someone dragged you through a field of fucking wildflowers,” she says to him. “And are those hives? Aren't your fucking meds working?”

“They take a couple days to kick in,” Justin says. Not technically a lie. “I'll be fine by Monday.” That, okay, technically a lie.

“Go home, Sunshine.”

He shakes his head. “Brian doesn't like me underfoot on Friday nights,” he says, thinking vaguely that a few months ago that sentence would have had a whole different meaning.

Her face softens. She knows Fridays are for radiation. “Okay, honey,” she says. “Just take it easy, okay? I can hear you breathing from across the fucking place.”

Justin thinks sometimes about how if it were him that had cancer, he'd probably attach himself to Brian's leg before he'd let him leave him alone when he was shaking and puking. Brian, even though he's past the stage of physically throwing Justin out of the loft, still seems like the only use he has for him is practical; Justin can drive him home after radiation, Justin can pick up the protein bars, Justin can go to the video store. But actually fucking be there for him, actually act like he gives a shit? That's a bridge too far.

It's not nice to resent your partner for the way he's handling his cancer, but that's the point they've reached, it seems, and Justin _despises_ himself.

Debbie sends him home with a metric ton of soup, and Justin juggles it carefully as he unlocks the door to the loft and presses his wrist against his frantically itching nose. He puts the soup in the fridge, claws at his face, and notices that the windows are open again.

Brian's on the bathroom floor.

“Go away,” he says, when Justin hovers in the doorway.

“Cut it out. C'mon, come puke in a bucket for a while instead. Bed will feel a lot nicer than the tile.”

“But don't you want to watch your shitty movie?” It's amazing that Brian can throw up for hours and still find the energy to be a sardonic asshole.

Justin is so, so, so tired.

“Come on.” Justin puts his hands under Brian's forearms to help him up, and for a second it seems like Brian's going to let him.

And then he pulls away, roughly. “Would you fucking cut it out?” he says. “If I want to get off the bathroom floor I'll get off the fucking bathroom floor, okay? I don't need a chaperone.”

Justin starts coughing suddenly, can't help it, and Brian rolls his eyes and lies back down on the floor.

“Okay then,” Justin says. “I'm going to work on the comic book some. I'll be in the living room if you need anything.”

“Okay,” Brian says, and he almost sounds sorry, but only almost.

Justin retreats to the living room, but he can't imagine focusing on anything well enough to work right now. Michael's going to kill him tomorrow for not getting these panels done, but his eyes are too itchy and watery to focus on anything and he's really starting to feel like he can't breathe right. He thinks about getting up to make a cup of tea but the walk to the kitchen seems impossibly far.

He sneezes for the millionth time, and Brian says, “Sunshine?”

“Yeah.”

“Could you keep it down out there?”

His voice is almost apologetic. Almost.

Justin clears his throat. “Sorry.”

“Thanks. Sorry.”

He doesn't sleep that night.

**

Brian's still asleep in the morning. Justin works an early shift—no Deb, thank God—and then leaves to meet Michael at the comic shop. His eyebrows go up in alarm when Justin walks in. “Is something wrong with Brian?”

Justin rubs his face. “What?”

“Your face is all...”

Justin coughs out a laugh. “I'm not crying. It's allergies.”

“Jesus Christ, you look—”

“Yeah, I've heard.”

He comes out from behind the desk and ushers him into the back. “I'll turn the fan on—no, don't sit on the couch, it's all dusty, here...”

“I don't think it matters at this point,” Justin says.

“You need medicine. I'm going to the pharmacy.”

“Anything that works knocks me out,” he says. “It's no use.”

“Well, maybe you should be fucking knocked out for a while.”

“I can't,” Justin says.

“Why not?”

“Because I have four different projects to do for four different classes, and I didn't get any of these panels done yesterday because Brian was up all night throwing up, so either I'm taking care of him or I'm lying awake freaking the fuck out about how he won't let me take care of him and imagining every single fucking worst case scenario that comes into my head, and I have to go to the grocery store and the dry cleaner's and I just...I can't just take a pink pill and be out of commission for twelve hours right now. I need to be there if he needs me.”

Michael stares at him. “Justin, you're wheezing.”

“I'm okay.”

“Justin—”

“Brian has _cancer,”_ he says. “I don't really fucking care if I'm having some allergy issues.”

“I'm sure Brian cares,” Michael says, in this voice like he thinks he's found some trump card, and it's fucking annoying.

“No, actually, he doesn't.”

And then Michael says, “Well, he's got a lot on his plate right now,” because he's gone a record eleven seconds without defending Brian and he can't go any longer. On a different day Justin might snap _I literally just fucking said that_ but he is so, so tired.

So he just says, “Do you have any tissues?”

“Yeah,” Michael says.

**

The loft is empty when he gets home sometime before seven, the panels finally finished. He thinks he remembers Brian mentioning something yesterday about having to go back to the office today, but he might be making that up. He stands in the kitchen and grips the counter and tries to catch his breath, but he's really having trouble pulling air in and he ends up coughing for what feels like a year. Eventually he finds the energy to go to the bathroom and steam up the shower and try to open up his airways, but actually showering feels like way too much work. He sits on the floor in front of the sink and wraps his arms around his knees and hopes Brian's okay at work, and worries about Brian, and wants Brian.

He doesn't know how much time passes before the bathroom door opens. Maybe he falls asleep for a time. That's probably good. The shower's still running, but the hot water is long gone so there's no more steam, not that it really seemed to have helped anyway.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Brian says. “Why are you crying?”

“I'm not...crying,” Justin says, though he honestly doesn't know if that's true, and when he has to stop and breathe between words he realizes he's sort of scared.

Brian knits his eyebrows together and drops into a crouch in front of him. “What do you need?”

“It's just allergies, I'm fine.”

“I realize that you're fine, I'm asking you what you need.”

Justin stands up and barely notices that Brian helps him. “I have to go...back to Daphne's.”

“What the fuck? No.”

“Yeah.”

“Don't fucking punish me for being a jerk right now.”

Justin smiles a little in spite of everything; he can't help it. “I'm not. My inhaler's at Daphne's.”

Brian breathes out. “Fuck, I have an inhaler here.”

“You do?”

“Of course I do. Come here,” Brian says. He hugs Justin, really gently, and drops a kiss on his ear. “You have to stay here. God, I didn't realize it was that bad.”

Justin clears his throat. “Um, Brian? Could I actually get that inhaler?”

Brian lets go of him and roots around under the sink. “Go get in bed, I'll bring it.”

Justin's embarrassed, grateful, too tired to argue. He sits on the bed and is wondering if he can gather enough air to blow his nose when Brian comes out with supplies tucked under his arm. He hands Justin an inhaler while he punches out a few Benadryl.

“I can't take those,” Justin says, between puffs.

“I'm pretty sure you can't afford not to.”

Justin rubs his eyes and tries to figure out how to explain.

"How are you?" he just asks instead.

Brian sits down next to him. “I'm okay. Threw up once earlier today. Kept lunch down."

"That's good." He sneezes, hard, and Brian cocks his head to the side.

"Bless you. Sunshine. Can I make you a deal?” he says.

Justin watches him warily.

“For the next twenty-four hours, can I not have cancer? And you can take your meds and get some rest and fucking sleep?”

It sounds heavenly, but the problem is that Brian _does have cancer_ and Justin can already feel the panic of setting that aside for himself, for _anything,_ rushing through him like a storm.

But Brian is looking at him with those eyes.

“Twelve hours,” Justin says, his voice hoarse.

Brian's lips quirk. “Eighteen.”

“Okay,” Justin says, and Brian nods to the Benadryl. Justin still hesitates, but he takes them.

Brian kisses his cheek. “I ordered an air purifier. That should help, right?”

“Uh-huh.”

“You should have told me it was this bad.”

“I thought I did,” Justin says. Honestly. “I don't remember.”

Brian chuckles. “You're so tired.”

“I'm okay.”

“I think that word has ceased to have any meaning around these parts,” Brian says. “Are you scratching—let me see that.”

Justin holds out his arms.

“Jesus, only you could get hives from hay fever.”

“Yeah.”

“Where else are they?”

“Everywhere, I think.”

Brian lifts up the back of Justin's shirt and groans. “Jesus Christ. No wonder you were crying.”

“I was not crying.”

“I was there, you were crying.”

“My face is just leaking.”

“We have some of that fucking expensive as shit hypoallergenic lotion, take your shirt off.” He goes to the bathroom and hunts around. “And take another hit of that inhaler, wheezy. I'm taking you to Urgent Care when you wake up if you still sound this bad.”

“Can't,” Justin says. “I'm going to sleep for all eighteen of these hours.”

“Yeah, you realize this was a bullshit deal, right?”

“No.”

Brian comes back with lotion and gestures for Justin to lie down on his stomach. It feels itchy but lovely gliding across Justin's back, and even though it's harder to breathe in this position Justin thinks he feels a little better.

“You are actually still allowed to need things,” Brian says. “I checked the handbook.”

“No.”

“That's all you have to say? 'No?'”

“Yeah.”

Brian slaps his ass. “Very convincing arguments.”

“Don't hit me, I'm sleeping.”

Brian keeps rubbing lotion into Justin's back, his neck, his arms. Gradually, he shifts so his body is on top of him, his weight held on his elbows. “Justin?” he whispers, and God, the darkness, the depth of that whisper, Justin could live here forever.

“Yeah?”

“You're doing such a good job," Brian whispers. "You're doing so well.”


End file.
